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Review of: The Breach and the Observance. Theatre retranslation as a strategy of

artistic differentiation, with special reference to translations of Shakspeare's Hamlet

(1777-2001) (Jan-Willem Mathijssen)

Delabastita, Dirk

Published in: Target Publication date: 2009 Link to publication

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Delabastita, D 2009, 'Review of: The Breach and the Observance. Theatre retranslation as a strategy of artistic differentiation, with special reference to translations of Shakspeare's Hamlet (1777-2001) (Jan-Willem

Mathijssen)', Target, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 388-393.

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The Breach and the Observance

Theatre retranslation as a strategy of artistic differentiation,

with special reference to retranslations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1777-2001) Schenden en volgen

Theaterhervertaling als een strategie van artistieke onderscheiding,

met speciale aandacht voor hervertalingen van Shakespeares Hamlet (1777-2001) met een samenvatting in het Nederlands

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The Breach and the Observance

Theatre retranslation as a strategy of artistic differentiation,

with special reference to retranslations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1777-2001) Schenden en volgen

Theaterhervertaling als een strategie van artistieke onderscheiding,

met speciale aandacht voor hervertalingen van Shakespeares Hamlet (1777-2001) met een samenvatting in het Nederlands

Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Prof. dr. Willem Hendrik Gispen, ingevolge het besluit van het Col-lege van Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen

door

Jan Willem Mathijssen

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Promotoren: Prof. dr. A.B.M. Naaijkens Prof. dr. P.J. de Voogd

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements 6

Introduction 8

Chapter1:Reasonsforretranslation 16

1.1 Previous theories on retranslation: ageing texts and perfect translation 17

1.2 Retranslation as a norm conflict 17

1.3 Agents in (re)translation: commissioner, audience and translator 19

1.4 Retranslation in the context of the theatre 21

Chapter2:Differingnormsintheatretranslation 2

2.1 Deducing norms from a translation 25

2.2 Theatre translation as a particular area of translation studies 25 Figure 1: Possible options of a theatre translator 26

Figure 2: Series of concretisations 33

2.3 The interplay between theatre maker and translator 32 2.4 The translator’s material: length and the possibilities of rewriting 37

2.5 The domestic and the foreign 43

2.6 The audience’s reaction to retranslation: debates as a sign of transgression 55

Chapter3:Casestudiesofdifferentiation:HamletretranslationsontheDutchstage 8

3.1 General remarks on the production of Hamlet translations between 1777 and 2001 59

Figure 3: Hamlet in Dutch translation 1777-1882 59

Figure 4: Hamlet in Dutch translation 1882-1982 60

Figure 5: Hamlet in Dutch translation 1982-2001 60

3.2 1786 - Retranslation of Ducis’s Hamlet by Zubli: propriety and patriotism 61 3.3 1882 - Burgersdijk’s translation: the problems of staging a direct translation 68 Figure 6: Comparison between Burgersdijk’s and Ducis’s Hamlet 71 3.4 1907 - Van Looy’s retranslation: director’s theatre and commissioned translation 77 Figure 7: Comparison between Van Looy’s and Burgersdijk’s Hamlet 79 3.5 1957 - Bert Voeten’s retranslation: passive retranslation as active differentiation 86 Figure 8: Comparison between Voeten’s and Van Looy’s Hamlet 88 3.6 1966 - Staging of Marowitz’s Hamlet: theatre makers as co-authors of the text 97 3.7 1983 - Claus and Decorte’s ‘tradaptations’: Belgian influence on the Dutch theatre 103 3.8 1986 - Komrij’s retranslation: retranslation as a strategy and a trend 109 Figure 9: Comparison between Komrij’s and Voeten’s Hamlet 111 3.9 1991 - Boonen’s retranslation: individuality as a reason for differentiation 118 Figure 10: Comparison between Boonen’s and Komrij’s Hamlet 121 3.10 1997 - Boermans’s rewriting of Voeten’s translation 125 Figure 11: Comparison between Albers’s and Boermans’s Hamlet 129 Figure 12: Comparison between Bindervoet and Henkes’s and Albers’s Hamlet 134

Conclusion 138

Figure 13: Choices in Hamlet retranslation 1777-2001 140

AppendixA:TranslationsofHamletinperformance 18 AppendixB:Hamletperformances 18 Selectbibliography 212 Index 226 Samenvatting 23 Curriculumvitae 238

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 Acknowledgements

The first time I saw Hamlet in the theatre (Dirk Tanghe, 1991), I was seventeen years old. I remember people smoking on stage, blue light, hats, loud music, and the girl I was with. I also remember eagerly awaiting ‘To be or not to be’ and mouthing it when it was spoken. Most of all, however, I remember how I was carried away, thinking that if all theatre was like this, I should see more of it. The second Hamlet I saw (Theu Boermans, 1997) made the same impression on the girl who accompanied me. She said that if all theatre were like this, she’d been missing so much. I hope I have infused some of this enthusiasm into the work of schol-arship you have before you; and invite theatre makers and translators to offer to upcoming generations the same magic that I have experienced.

For the existence of this dissertation I am most indebted to two people. It would not have been written without the invitation of Dr. Nelly Stienstra and it would not have been finished without the support of Professor Peter de Voogd, who put me back on track and kept me there. Professor Ton Naaijkens has been a great support both by inspiring me and by giving me critical comments, a task which has also been executed with much diligence by Dr. Ton Hoenselaars.

I also have enjoyed the generous support of Tanja Holzhey (University of Am-sterdam), Eva Mathijssen (actress/writer), Bart Dieho (Utrecht University), Rob Scholten (ATKA Amsterdam), Gerda Roest (Onafhankelijk Toneel), Ana and Aat Nederlof (actors), Don Duyns (director), Jan Joris Lamers (director), Carel Alphenaar (translator), Burt La-maker (La Kei Producties), Josta Obbink (Theatergasthuis), Yardeen Roos (director), Els van der Perre (Dietsche Belfort & Warande), Marianne van Kerkhoven (dramaturge), Erik Bind-ervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (translators), Gitte Brouwer (Mobile Arts/De Parade), Lies-beth Houtman (De Bezige Bij), Janine Brogt (dramaturge), Leonard Frank (director), Hugo Heinen (actor) and the staff of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague), of the Theater Instituut Nederland (Amsterdam) and of the Vlaams Theater Instituut (Brussels). I wish to thank Lesa Sawahata, Alana Gillespie, Luisa Bieri, but most of all Dr. Aleid Fokkema for their editorial input and their kind remarks on both form and content. They straightened me out when I was wobbly.

If the fascination for what’s difficult has not completely dried out the sap of my veins, this is due to the unfledging support of Tessa Lavrijsen, of my friends (of whom Tirza Visser, Martijn Knol and Edwin van Houten deserve special mention, as they have helped shaping my ideas along the way) and of my loving parents Will van den Oever and Wim Mathijssen, to whom I dedicate this book.

(photograph cover: Pierre Bokma and Hans Croiset as Hamlet and Claudius, in the Hamlet bij het Publiekstheater, directed by Gerardjan Rijnders, 1986. Photograph courtesy of Kees de Graaff)

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 “�itiable �nglishmen�� ��ey will never be able to read their Bard as clearly as we can����itiable �nglishmen�� ��ey will never be able to read their Bard as clearly as we can���

–FransKellendonk1

At the end of the nineteenth century the actor Louis Bouwmeester walks on stage, heaving and sighing profoundly. He is playing the Prince of Denmark, and in his grand style he seems to out-Hamlet Hamlet. He is in no way similar to Jacob Derwig, the twenty-first-century boy-next-door who watches CNN on television in the same play a century later. ‘Every age its own Hamlet,’ is a statement often heard in the theatre. This goes for any country: the English have produced performances of Hamlet that had very different angles on the play. And yet – in the Dutch version the very lines the actors speak are utterly different, although they are from the very same play. In fact, the selection of mirrors that the Dutch hold up to Shake-speare has a much wider range than English interpretations, for the Dutch have to perform the Bard in translation.

Notably, in neither version the Dutch audience is surprised they can understand what happens on stage, even though they are watching a very old play. This is the achieve-ment of the translator who keeps the play’s language up to date. In fact, it is claimed that the development of the target language makes it necessary for a text to be translated again every fifty years.2 In the case of Hamlet, however, the number of retranslations in the last hundred

and twenty years has greatly exceeded the predicted three versions. Especially in the last two decades of the twentieth century, the production of retranslations has been voluminous.

Moreover, contrary to the translator’s alleged ‘invisibility’ (Venuti, 1995), the thea-tre translator has always been clearly present in the promotion and the reception of the play. This gives cause for the suspicion that in the theatre, retranslation stretches further than a merely practical update of language. According to Hamlet, some customs are more honoured “in the breach than in the observance” and apparently the same thought has struck those who cast available translations aside. This leads to questions like: What happens in the process of retranslation for the theatre? Who is behind the production of such a large quantity of new text? And why do people decide a retranslation should be made?

Retranslation is a particularly interesting area in translation studies, since it offers insights into the function of translation. Previous theories on retranslation either interpret the phenomenon as a target culture’s progress towards a ‘perfect translation’ or as a target culture’s attempt to make a more accessible version of the first translation.3 Pym (1998), however,

of-fers a plausible alternative with his distinction between passive and active retranslation. Pas-sive retranslation, according to Pym, occurs when the previous translation is outdated. Active retranslation is a symptom of conflicts between people or groups within the target culture. In his view, the target culture is not homogeneous but consists of different groups. These groups each have their own opinions about proper translation, which are expressed by ‘translational norms’ – or ‘poetics’. These norms, according to Lefevere (1992), are strongly influenced by the power that controls the text: in simpler terms, by the commissioner.



“Iedere vertaling is een spiegel die het oorspronkelijke Engels van weer een iets andere kant weerkaatst. Be-klagenswaardige Engelsen! Ze zullen hun volksbard nooit zo helder kunnen lezen als wij.” Kellendonk (985). Except where indicated otherwise, all translations from Dutch to English are mine.

 See Bassnett (000) and Pieters (004).

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Against this background, a host of questions arises. If a retranslation is an expres-sion of a conflict, one should like to know who are involved in it. The translator is the first person likely to be a party in this conflict, but in the case of a retranslation of a theatre text, the theatre makers can be involved as well. Is the conflict actually different if a translation is made for the theatre? Does the fact that the translator is dependent on the creators of the performance for a production of his text, imply that he4 makes his new text for the director

rather than for the spectators attending the play? Or is it the audience and changing fashions in taste that demand a retranslation? How important is a retranslation for a director? Does a director take recourse to the retranslation in any way, to support his interpretation of the play? Furthermore, what kind of conflict is actually expressed by the retranslation? To whom is the ‘aggression’ of a new text directed? Is it a case of one translator reacting to a previous translator? Does the conflict between two different versions involve the directors who use these two texts as well? Lastly, how is this conflict really expressed? Is the mere presence of a retranslation in itself a statement of defiance, or is the conflict to be found in the very fabric of the translation? Is a new text delivered by the translator, containing different norms? Are these norms really different for a theatre retranslation and a ‘literary’ retranslation? These questions lead to my major thesis:

Staging a retranslation is a strategy to differentiate a theatre production from previous theatre productions through the application of differing translational norms.

Retranslations can be studied from a synchronic or a diachronic point of view. Both have drawbacks of which one should be aware. A synchronic research – on a corpus of retranslations of more than one text, over a limited period of time – has the disadvantage that one cannot be sure whether the patterns that come to the fore are time-bound or universal. A diachronic research – on a corpus of retranslations of a single text, over an extended period of time – has the disadvantage that one cannot take into account all contextual changes that may have caused a retranslation to come about. Moreover, using a specific text might yield patterns that are only valid for that particular text and not for others. While bearing these limitations in mind, I have opted for the diachronic approach in this dissertation, so to fol-low retranslations of one text over a longer period of time. The necessary contextualisation is supplied by the copious background information in the extensive footnotes. In order to be better able to pinpoint contextual changes, the research is limited: in the first place to a spe-cific country, a spespe-cific community, a spespe-cific use of the text, and a spespe-cific text, but also to a number of case studies in which the protagonists and their motives are identifiable.

My research focuses on retranslations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, since this is one of the plays most performed in the Netherlands. As one of the most familiar, as well as one of theAs one of the most familiar, as well as one of the most performed plays in the canon,5 Hamlet is the play par excellence for a study of the

phenom-enon of retranslation. In fact, Hamlet is one of the very few plays that are the theatrical

equiv-4 Wherever ‘he’ is used in this dissertation, ‘she’ is also implied.

5

Hamlet was the most staged Shakespeare play on the Dutch stage in the period 88-00: at least 5 produc-tions. The runner up is Macbeth (45 productions). In the period 986-00 Shakespeare was the most staged author, followed by Chekhov.

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alent of what in pop music is labeled ‘greatest hit’. Throughout the entire twentieth centuryThroughout the entire twentieth century it caused audiences to react to ‘To be or not to be’ with expectation and delight. They eagerly waited for it to come and then mumbled along when these famous lines were finally delivered. It is clear from the remarks on Forbes Robertsonfrom the remarks on Forbes Robertson’s presentation in 18986 to interviews in 1997

and 2001,7 that Dutch spectators were ready to devour any actor taking on the role of roles.

Moreover, Hamlet represents a major challenge to the expertise of both translator and theatre maker. Hamlet is a notoriously difficult play to stage. One might even argue that

Hamlet in its original form is impossible to perform. It is a Renaissance play, written in the

socio-cultural context of England at the turn of the sixteenth century. It is a play without a definite original; there are three manuscripts that present a very early version of the play, of which two are contestants for being closest to Shakespeare’s intentions. And worse of all, it is too long to be staged in its entirety, contrary to a shorter play like Macbeth.8 There is evidence

that the contents were reduced in the earliest Renaissance performance and although

‘entire-6 “Hamlet-kenners“Hamlet-kenners Ze zaten hier en daar, tusschen de massa, de Hamlet-kenners die heel lang geleden, in hun latere schooljaren, misschien wel eens het stuk hadden doorgelezen omdat het zoo gek is als men het nooit gelezen had. Of anderen die het nooit gelezen hadden maar veel citaten hadden opgevangen en dus net zoo mooi uit Hamlet konden citeeren als Shakespeare zelf. In de pauze schoten ze als vorens op elkaar af, gaven een handje hier, een knikje dáár, met een bonjourtje en een hoe-gaat-het, aller-charmanst babbelend over Robertson en dat hij toch zoo uitstekend was, juist alsof ze ‘t over een nieuwe koffiesoort hadden. En dan, gedurende het spelen, de historische, beroemde, groote passages! Als er zoo’n vermaard woord door de zaal trilde, dat zich door de souvereine macht zijner wijde beteekenis een eeuwigdurend gebied in den menschelijken geest heeft afgedwongen… dan keken ze elkaar aan, links en rechts, en ze grijnsden en knikten tevreden: Hoor je wel, daar heb je ‘t nu… Frailty, thy name is woman… Something is rotten in the State of Denmark… Alas, poor Yorick!… Prettig, om zich zo goed thuis te vinden in de wereldberoemdheden. Vooral dat zien aankomen van den grooten monoloog. Hè, wat werd je daar zenuwachtig van, zoo bibberig in de knieën, als je die fameuse woorden zoo zag aankomen en als je bij elken grooten stap van Robertson dacht: Daar komt het. Maar dan kwam het toch weer niet, zoodat men haast in de verzoeking kwam om, met een herinnering aan Zwarte Kardoes – och waarom niet?… comedie is maar comedie – uit te roepen: Skiet òf! Eindelijk- daar had je ‘m, hoor: To be or not to be… jawel, net zoo als ‘t in Shakespeare staat. Aardig wanneer men zijn citaten zoo officieel hoort bevestigen!… En ze gleden welvoldaan wat onderuit in hun fauteuils of hun stoeltjes om verder maar half te luisteren naar den monoloog. ‘t Kwam er nu niet veel meer op aan. To be or not to be, dat was the quaestie. Alleen, in ‘t begin, waren een paar Hamlet-kenners het oneens. Wat hadden ze daar nu gehoord: Something is rotten…? Wel neen: Something is wrong. Verbeeld je: rotten! Ajakkes, rotten, zoo iets ordinairs zou Shake-speare niet zeggen. – Wrong! – Neen, rotten, ‘t was bepaald geen rotten geweest. – Och kom!… Maar ten slotte gingen ze toch allemaal zeer voldaan naar huis, voldaan namelijk over den verbazenden kunst-zin dien zij door ‘t bijwonen van de voorstelling toch hadden betoond. ‘Een eminent knappe kerel toch, die Shakespeare, hè?’ ‘Dat zal waar zijn! Een kraan, hoor! Bonsoir!’” Cekaë, ‘Hamlet-kenners’, Algemeen Handelsblad, --898.  “[Eric Schneider:] ‘Annemarie Polak heeft gezegd: Hamlet spelen is een soort bar mitswa doen. Het is volwas-sen worden, ook in je vak. Het is als het beklimmen van de Mount Everest. Iedereen moet je helpen. Het is ongelofelijk ingrijpend. Je vraagt je af: Hoe maak ik het in vredesnaam waar. Het is een kwelling om te doen, maar tegelijk heeft het ook iets geils. Ze zitten allemaal te wachten op “To be or not to be” (…)’ [Pierre Bokma:] ‘Vanaf het begin van de voorstelling ligt een prospectus klaar: let op de volgende monologen, die zijn door die en die zo en zo gedaan. Dus: let goed op hoe hij het gaat doen. Dat maakt het ingewikkeld, daar kom je niet los van. Daarom heb ik expres het begin van “To be or not to be” onverstaanbaar gedaan.’ [Eric Schneider:] ‘En dat vond ik nou zo jammer. Ik was erg benieuwd hoe jij het zou doen.’” Television show De Plantage, broadcast 4-9-99, on the occasion of the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet film. Shakespeare translator Jan Jonk: “Waarom Hamlet dan toch zo immens populair is dat er telkens weer nieuwe vertalingen van blijven verschijnen? Dat is de herkenning. Zodra ‘to be or not to be’ weerklinkt, zie je iederen in de zaal opleven en elkaar aanstoten. Dat vindt men lekker.” TvdB, ‘Nieuwe Hamlet-vertaling’, VPRO-Gids, 5--00. 8 According to most editors the Folio text of Hamlet is still longer than what we can suppose was played at the Globe. Nevertheless, Urkowitz (99: 66-0) has made plausible that Elizabethans were well used to going to plays that lasted three hours or more. See also: Holderness, Graham and Bryan Loughrey (99: 9-9), Werstine (988: -6) and Dover Wilson (94 and 95).

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ties’ have occasionally been staged, performing the full text takes at least four hours.9 This

forces both translators and directors to take far-reaching decisions: the greater the challenge, the more outspoken the decisions. This, in turn makes it easier to see when a dilemma has presented itself.

The starting point of this dissertation is the relation between the various transla-tions and performances. The choice for a separate community is motivated by the idea that retranslation may have a different function when used in a different context. Here the theatre is chosen as a constant variable. Theatre retranslation is especially interesting as a subject, since the theatre translation differs from literary translation both in the requirements it has to meet and in the relation the text has with its audience. In his monumental history of Shake-speare in the Netherlands, written over two decades ago (1988), Leek treats translations and performances separately. Such an approach fails to show the interplay between directors and translators. This dissertation, besides offering information on the two decades after Leek’s publication, aims to fill this gap.

The first performances of stage retranslations of Hamlet form the backbone of my research. Any research is limited for pragmatic reasons: the specific community of the profes-sional theatre (as opposed to the publishing world) already represents one such delimiter, and a further restriction is in the choice for a specific country: the Netherlands. As a consequence, only those Hamlets are discussed that are performed in the Dutch language on a Dutch stage. Such retranslations as those by Roorda van Eysinga (1836), Nico van Suchtelen (1947) and Jan Jonk (1991), which were never performed on a professional stage, are therefore ex-cluded. This also excludes the translation of fragments, like Willem Bilderdijk’s single (1783) or Harry Mulisch’s multiple translation of ‘To be or not to be’ (1987) and the translations of subtitles for films by Olivier (1948), Kozintsev (1963), Gibson (1990) and Branagh (1996). Because of the limitation to professional productions, one will also look in vain for amateur theatre performances of Hamlet,10 even famous ones like those in Diever (Loekema, 1950

and Rep, 1990); the student theatre companies ASTU and SARST are the only exception, since they constitute an overture to a permanent revolution on the Dutch professional stage. Also Dutch plays that may have been based on Hamlet, like Geeraerdt Brandt’sGeeraerdt Brandt’s Veinzende

Torquatus (1643), offer little use for a study of retranslation. The choice for the Netherlands

implies that most of the Hamlets staged in Belgium fall outside the scope of this research, including guest performances in the Netherlands. These regrettably include the performances of Courteaux’s Hamlet (staged in Belgium in 1968 and 1971).11 An exception is made for the

Hamlets by Claus (1982) and Decorte (1985), since they may have represented a predecessor

for Dutch productions that had commissioned Belgian translators. Both of these productions have been included in this research (Tanghe, 1991; Doesburg, 1999).

Based on these criteria, a number of case studies has been selected from a greater corpus of Hamlet performance in the Netherlands. Based on Leek’s overview (1988), the

per-9 The BBC dramatization for an audio book (99) lasted three and a half hours, Branagh’s film (996) lasts ca. 4 minutes, and translator Burgersdijk wrote in a letter to A.C. Loffelt in April 880 that the reading out of the play, without naming the characters, lasted about five hours. 0 Professional productions before 945 are taken as productions by actors who make a living out of acting in front of a public, paying audience, and after 945 those productions by theatre companies that are subsidised by the Dutch government.  Probably also in 964, although the Belgian VTI does not give this information.

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formance database of Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN), and the reviews of performances collected by TIN and found in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), a list of productions of

Hamlet has been drawn up that can be found in Appendix B. It includes the dates and places

of the performances, the translation used, the people involved in the production and the reviews of that production as given by these sources. Complementary to this list, a survey has been made of the Dutch translations of Hamlet that were published in print, together with the performances in which they were used. This survey can be found in Appendix A. The case studies selected for this study are all first productions of a Hamlet translation. Some are not been treated as extensively, since their fates ran along similar lines as other more thoroughly discussed translations. Thus the performances of other adaptations than Marowitz’s Hamlet (like Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine), are only touched upon; and Carel Alphenaar’s transla-tion of Hamlet for children is incorporated in the sectransla-tion on Boonen’s translatransla-tion.

In the search for the cause for a stage retranslation, it is vital to know who has been responsible for them. We therefore have to know how the director and the translator divided their tasks, since this determines how much hold the director has had on the outcome of the translation process and how much was done on the translator’s own initiative. Subsequently, we have to know the intentions of translator and director with text and performance, as these indicate whether translator and theatre maker want to distinguish themselves overtly from their predecessors, and whether the director’s interpretation of the play and the method of translation share a common ground.

In order to evaluate the intentions of translators and directors, research has been done in paratextual evidence. This includes the reviews, posters and programmes of the paratextual evidence. This includes the reviews, posters and programmes of the evidence. This includes the reviews, posters and programmes of the programmes of the of the various performances as collected by TIN, the introductions to the published translations, occasional interviews and publications on the translators, directors and theatre companies. Moreover, the division of responsibilities as voiced by programme, translation, play text or by the people involved, has been used to indicate the theatre makers’ hold on the outcome of the translation process.

Furthermore, a textual analysis is part of this study too. This is required to deter-mine whether a retranslation represents an actual breach or merely is an update of a preceding translation, but also to decide whether the translator’s strategy actually coincides with the translator’s intentions and with the director’s interpretation of the play.12

This textual analysis is based on previous theories of theatre translation, which have yielded an inventory of characteristics of the dramatic text. The first characteristic is the fact that the dramatic text is used in a performance, which represents a greater whole of differ-ent sign languages that are used according to certain time-bound convdiffer-entions. The second characteristic of the dramatic text is the nature of its language. Since the dramatic text con-sists of dialogues it is much like spoken language, but in essence it is an artificial and literary language. The third is the fact that a play addresses a world inside the play as well as a world outside it. A theatre maker can choose to honour the organic whole of the play, but he may also choose to speak across the play to the audience.

As a result of these characteristics, the theatre translator runs into a number of

dif- In fact, Toury (995: 65-66) argues that normative pronouncements are partial and biased, and should be treated with every possible circumspection.

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ficulties. The first dilemma he faces is how to honour the value of the dramatic text as part of a performance text. Dependent on his judgment, he deals differently with the possibilities of adaptation: retaining, reducing, emending or rewriting the text of the original. This also depends on his consideration of his relation to the original author: he can make himself sub-servient to the latter, or he can use his text as mere material. Secondly, the dilemma of the ar-tificial nature of the dramatic text lies in the fact that a playwright’s rhetorical tools change in the course of time. Again, a translator has to make a decision to preserve the original’s literary features or to adapt them to the expectations of a contemporary audience. The incongruity between the two worlds of the performance causes a third dilemma. These two types of com-munication reflect a more general dilemma of translation: the choice between foreignising versus domesticating,13 that is, either retaining the historical and exotic features of the text,

or translating them into the frame of reference of the audience.

Last but not least, the reactions of the spectators are presented. If a retranslation is an expression of a conflict between groups, it is possible that the receivers of the text belong to different groups as well. In that case the critics’ expectancy norms are likely to disagree, with the translator’s and the director’s products and/or with each other. When voiced in debates regarding the translations and productions, these disagreements offer a grip on the variation of reactions and are indications of prevailing opinions. They are used to measure the direct impact of the retranslation, by checking whether the audience took notice of the differences in the new text. They are also used to decide whether retranslations corresponded to the expectations of the audience or are considered a transgression. Moreover, they are used to investigate whether theatrical audiences can be considered as a group sharing common norms regarding translation. Finally, they are analysed to determine whether the audience may have motivated the creation of a retranslation.

The analysis of reviews should not be taken as an attempt to write a reception history of Hamlet. Studying the influence of translations and performances would result in another book. To cut losses for scholarship, however, the footnotes of this dissertation profusely offer leads for further research. They also offer a variation of voices to cast further light and different perspectives on the subject at hand. Moreover, the original text of reviews, interviews, letters, and other documents is always given in the footnotes.

The choice both for a single play and for case studies furthermore excludes all but tentative statements on a general development of translational norms. Any statement will concern Hamlet only. The events that have caused norms to take shape or that have put people in particular positions shall be outlined where necessary for the understanding of the background, but are not in themselves the subject of this dissertation. A presentation of chronology is nevertheless inevitable: a retranslation is a retranslation because of a previous translation and the new translation is seen in relation to this predecessor. Our concern here is how the staging of a retranslation reacts to a tradition and not any tradition per se.

This dissertation consists of three sections. The first is a discussion of retranslation and posits my hypotheses regarding theatre retranslation. The second is a discussion of the characteristics of the theatre text and points out which relationships are possible between the

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production crew and the translator, and which dilemmas a theatre translation will generally come across. The third is an analysis of the case studies. Here, each section is divided in two parts. The first discusses the breach of a particular Hamlet performance with its predecessor. The second treats the observance of succeeding performances to the new translation’s norms, which is not to say that some productions made in the wake of a new translation do not alsodo not also constitute pivotal points, or have not raised a major debate. All important productions in this respect have been granted the necessary space. The only exception is the last section of theThe only exception is the last section of the third chapter, which discusses the debate raised by a single performance that resulted in two consecutive retranslations.

The sequence of case studies starts off in 1786, when Ambrosius Justus Zubli chal-lenges the De Cambon-Van der Werken translation of Ducis’s French adaptation of Shake-speare’s Hamlet. It comprises the German-influenced Hamlet of 1882, by L.A.J. Burgersdijk and De Vereeniging Het Nederlandsch Tooneel; the symbolist Hamlet of 1907, by Jac. van Looy and the revolutionary director Eduard Verkade; the contemporary Hamlet of 1957, by Bert Voeten and Paul Steenbergen; the staging of the Marowitz Hamlet in 1966; Hugo Claus’s and Jan Decorte’s tradaptations of Hamlet in the early 1980’s; the Publiekstheater farewell production Hamlet of 1986, by Gerrit Komrij and Gerardjan Rijnders; the young

Hamlet of 1991, by Johan Boonen and Dirk Tanghe. The series ends around the turn of

the twentieth century, when Theu Boermans’ prose version of Hamlet (1997) provokes two consecutive retranslations of the play. Armed with the searchlights of theoretical background and textual analysis, we should be able to discern whether translators and directors actually teamed up to breach the Dutch Hamlet tradition.

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1 1�1�revioustheoriesonretranslation:ageingtextsandperfecttranslation

This dissertation is concerned with the question of ‘retranslation’, a phenomenon that still lacks a detailed or systematic study, as Susam-Sarajeva (2003) has pointed out. Why are texts translated again? In answering this question, it will be assumed that retranslation is a means of artistic differentiation, originating in the target culture as a result of conflicts between the norms of different people.

The term ‘retranslation’ refers to “subsequent translations of a text or part of a text, carried out after the initial translation that introduced this text to the ‘same’ target language” (Susam-Sarajeva, 2003: 2). Generally, retranslations are associated with the ‘ageing’ of trans-lated texts. The Dutch publisher Mark Pieters (2004) claims that after fifty years a translation can be considered obsolete. Bassnett (2000) argues that the period for the ‘ageing’ of texts expires sooner in drama translation than in any other type of text:

It is commonly held that plays require retranslating at regular intervals, usually ev-ery 20 years or so. There is no adequate explanation of this assumption, but it does seem that spoken language ages at a faster rate than written language, and since a play is essentially a transcript to be spoken, it follows that the ageing process will be more marked in a play translation than in other types of written text. (2000: 99) Retranslation is usually related to canonical literary texts. Retranslations are said to exist because ‘great translations’ of these texts are so few. Although translation is usually char-acterised by an ‘essential lack of accomplishment,’ one can occasionally succeed in creating a definitive translation by translating the text again. In this line of thought the retranslation will be an improvement on the previous translations. Critics differ, however, in explaining the nature of such an improvement. For those who believe that initial translations tend to reduce the ‘otherness’ of the source text (e.g. Bensimon, 1990; Berman, 1990), a retranslation is con-sidered to be more efficient in conveying the previously assimilated ‘otherness’ of the foreign material, because the target audience will have become acquainted with the text through the ‘introduction-translation.’ Others will note, however, how retranslations render the source text more accessible to the reader of the day (Rodriguez, 1990; Gambier, 1994). Hence an emphasis on the time factor: there is a continuous necessity for retranslation because earlier translations need to be updated. At first sight, the latter hypothesis – closely connected to Bassnett’s hypothesis on the ageing of texts – seems to be better suited to explain the repeated creation of retranslations, as they would follow the market of a changing target culture.

1�2Retranslationasanormconflict

Both these notions are refuted, however, by Susam-Sarajeva (2003, who points out that re-translations may come about within a very short time span. She argues that retranslation is not necessarily connected to the canonical status of the text, nor to the ageing of a translation, or to the adaptive or literal nature of the translation. Rather, the reasons for retranslation must be sought in the target culture: “Retranslations may have more to do with the needs

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and attitudes within the receiving system than any inherent characteristics of the source text which make it ‘prone to’ retranslations. After all, to grant a multiple entry visa to a foreigner is totally at the discretion of the receiving authorities.” (2003: 5)

Susam-Sarajeva shares this focus on the target culture with Gideon Toury (1995), a translation scholar who maintains that translations are “a fact of the culture which hosts them” (1995: 24) and proposes therefore to leave it up to the target culture to determine what are (so-called ‘assumed’) translations. According to Toury, a translation is a text in a certain language; it occupies a position, or fills “a slot, in the appropriate culture, or in a certain sec-tion thereof” (1995: 56). He argues that the introducsec-tion of a translasec-tion into a target culture always entails some change of the latter, and he claims that “alternative translations are not even likely to occupy the exact same position in the culture which hosts them even if they all came into being at the same point in time” (1995: 27).

Susam-Sarajeva observes that retranslation “may also emerge as a result of a synchro-nous struggle in the receiving system” in the case of her study of philosophical texts, “to create the target discourse into which these translations will be incorporated” (2003: 5). The idea of a ‘struggle’ being the cause of a retranslation is also embraced by Pym (1998), who intro-duced the concept of active retranslation. Pym argues that a more likely reason for tion is in “disagreements over translation strategies.” In other words, the cause for retransla-tion is related to the norms for translaretransla-tion. This is especially valid “when the text is complex enough to admit widely divergent versions.” Pym excludes, however, certain retranslations from this hypothesis, such as periodical retranslations (again the ‘ageing of translations’), or those retranslations separated by synchronic boundaries (geopolitical or dialectological), that constitute no conflict. These so-called “passive retranslations” reflect the changing attitude of (a large part of) the target culture and may confront the beliefs of two cultures set apart in time or geographical space, whereas “active retranslation” is a symptom of conflicts between people or groups within the target culture:

A comparison between two or more passive retranslations (…) would tend to pro-vide information about historical changes in the target culture (…). Quite apart from being often redundant (the information thus revealed could have been ob-tained without doing translation history), such a procedure can only affirm the general hypothesis that target-culture norms determine translation strategies. The comparative analysis of active retranslations, however, tends to locate causes far closer to the translator, especially in the entourage of patrons, publishers, readers and intercultural politics (although clearly not excluding monocultural influences from any side). The study of active retranslations would thus seem better positioned to yield insights into the nature and workings of translation itself, into its own spe-cial range of disturbances, without blindly surrendering causality to target-culture norms. (Pym, 1998: 82-84)

Many translation scholars have argued that the causes for translation should be sought in the cultural group the translator belongs to. Even-Zohar (1990) offers a vision of culture as a dynamic and heterogeneous structure, in which seemingly irreconcilable ele-ments constitute alternative systems of concurrent options. The systems in such a

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tem” are not equal, but in a permanent struggle for dominance. Lefevere (1992) claims that the ‘poetics’ of a translation (i.e. its translational norms) are socially or culturally constituted, and hence subject to change. According to Hermans (1996: 36) a cultural product is embed-ded in different systems and involves different groups of people, each with different inter-ests. Agreement on the nature of a ‘good’ translation is therefore rather unlikely. The fact of simultaneous retranslations proves that the target culture is not homogeneous, for, as Toury argued, if a translation is made to fill merely one single slot in the target culture, any other translation would be superfluous,.

With the concept of group conflicts, Susam-Sarajeva, Pym, Even-Zohar and Her-mans all suggest a context in which a retranslation is by necessity an act of defiance against a previous translation, containing some form of aggression. The question is whether this is necessarily the case. If there are indeed different groups within the target culture, they just as well might live in peaceful coexistence. Brownlie (2003: 137), for instance, particularizes Hermans’ theory in such a way that the groups of ‘publishing’ and ‘academia’ constitute two separate but not conflicting worlds, which still explains the differences in translation. The conflict that Susam-Sarajeva mentions, however, takes place within a single discipline (in her case philosophy). This means that even within a discipline we can distinguish between groups.

1�3Agentsin(re)translation:commissioner,audienceandtranslator

In order to understand group conflicts, one should know about the nature of the groups involved. Within the target culture and the subset of the subculture, translation scholars have distinguished three types of agents that constitute a potential group.

Lefevere stresses the influence of external factors on the translator, most importantly of patronage. Patronage is understood as “the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature” (1992: 15). As a regulatory body, such as individuals, groups, institutions, a social class, a political party, publishers, the media, etc., patronage sees to it that the literary system does not fall out of step with the rest of so-ciety. Patronage is predominantly related to ideology, described by Lefevere as the dominant concept of what society should “be allowed to be” (1992: 14), and as “the conceptual grid that consists of opinions and attitudes deemed acceptable in a certain society at a certain time, and through which readers and translators approach texts” (1998: 48). The patron en-sures the translator’s livelihood, as long as he or she agrees to remain within certain ideologi-cal limits (1983: 22). The translation strategy then is not solely determined by the ideology of the translator, but by the patron’s imposed ideology as well (1992: 41). A potential group therefore includes, for Lefevere, at least both the translator and the person(s) he depends on for a living. These include, in the first place, the translator’s commissioner(s) – publisher or theatre company – but also authorities providing subsidy for the translation, and the audi-ence paying for a book or production.

A distinction between professional norms and expectancy norms is made by Ches-terman (1993). The first emerge from competent professional behaviour and govern the ac-cepted methods and strategies of the translation process. Expectancy norms “are established

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by the receivers of the translation, by their expectations of what a translation (of a given type) should be like, and what a native text (of a given type) in the target language should be like” (1993: 9). According to Chesterman, a translator will attempt to conform to the expectancy norms of a particular community as well as to the professional norms of that community at one and the same time. Expectancy norms appear to rank higher for Chesterman, as it is the reader’s (or audience’s) expectations that govern the translators’ norms: “A professional trans-lator (…) seeks to design a target text in such a way that it will meet the expectancy norms pertaining to it” (1993: 10). The target audience of the translation must therefore be included in the definition of ‘group.’ Retranslation as the result of group conflict then is due to the audience’s changed expectations.

Pym, however, calls for more differentiation in the various causes for a translation and emphasises the role of the translator himself. In mentioning conflicts “between people or groups within the target culture,” he suggests that the individual translator is not accountable for a norm conflict alone, as more agents may be involved in determining the outcome of the translation process. The fact that he mentions “the entourage of patrons, publishers, readers and politics” suggests that Pym, like Lefevere, believes that a translation comes into being possibly because of the network relations of the translator to other social agents, although he does not appear to adhere to Lefevere’s claim that “rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power” (Lefevere, 1992: xi).

Pym is in fact critical of translation scholars such as Even-Zohar (1990), for whom the reason for a new translation can be explained only with reference to its position in the target culture: “systemic empiricism tends to place all causes on one level” (Pym, 1998: 146). He finds fault in the systemic approach for neglecting the human dimension of translation and opposes the suggestion that a translation comes about merely to fill in a gap in the target culture: “A certain evasion of hard thought […] leads to idealist assumptions that markets, clients and translators are in some kind of fundamental agreement” (1998: 152-3). Pym asks rhetorically what might happen “when these three factors are in contradiction with each other?” (Pym, 1998: 154). A case of such a conflict that was presented by Richard Todd (1992) may be cited in support of Pym’s objections.14Further complications for the systemic

approach are raised by his observation that causation can also be material (i.e. as a result of developments in the source text material) and formal (i.e. as a result of historical norms al-lowing a translation to be accepted as such), as well as final (i.e. determined by the purpose of the text). Translation theory has tended to propose the a priori dominance of only one type of cause, i.e. mainly the final cause (1998: 144). A fourth cause for the translation (which he calls ‘efficient’) is therefore proposed by Pym, namely the motives of the translator himself. Causation then may take place on a personal rather than a collective level. For Pym, a group conflict can therefore consist of a conflict between translators alone.

4 Todd (99) demonstrates that translator (Marnix, Lord of St Aldegonde) and ‘patronage’ (the National Synod of 586) disagreed about the revision of the former’s translation of a vernacular psalter. Todd locates the cause for the revision in the translator’s desire to create a philologically more accurate version, but the cause for the patron’s wish to have such a revision was in the desire to have a text that was more useful, i.e. easier to chant. The revised psalter did appear in 59, but the privilege of it was granted – contrary to the 586 Synod’s stipu-lations – to Vulcanius, who had supported (and inspired) Marnix’s philological approach. Todd’s case not only proves that patronage and translator can have conflicting opinions, but also suggests that the translator needs support to have his translation reach an audience (in this case, to be printed).

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21 1�Retranslationinthecontextofthetheatre

The starting point for this dissertation is formed by two basic assumptions inferred from the theories mentioned above. Firstly, retranslations will be considered as expressions of (transla-tional) norms. Secondly, it will be assumed that the translator does not operate in a vacuum; his work can be related to the values of other people. These two assumptions will serve to assess whether the metaphor of a struggle between conflicting groups actually is applicable to the phenomenon of retranslation.

In order to understand the nature of the group, it is necessary to determine the con-text of the translation in the target culture. In the case of the present dissertation, the concon-text for translations is formed by the Dutch theatre. As such, the theatre constitutes a special category within the literary field, because of the role and nature of different communities such as theatre companies, dramatic schools, and so on. These communities, rather than mere ‘literary’ texts, will provide the focal point for this thesis.

The theatre translation is a translation made to be performed on stage. Thus it is dependent on people who desire to stage it in order to reach an audience. This is unlike the case of literary texts (novels, poems) where both the person of the translator and the primary customer, the publishing house, usually act as the ‘invisible’ intermediaries so as to create the impression that the author is communicating directly to the reader (Venuti, 1995). In the theatre, the customer of the translation, i.e. the theatre company, tends to make itself very visible. Whereas in the publishing world the author’s name and reputation is an important factor in sales, it is, in the world of the theatre, also the quality of the theatre company that attracts audiences. Susam-Sarajeva spoke about retranslation as instruments in a struggle to create a target language discourse. She showed how retranslations proposed alternative ver-sions for the same philosophical concepts. The aim of the performing artists is quite different, however. There is no real need to achieve consensus or to argue cases in the theatre. What matters is interpretation. A performance is a showcase of several artistic intentions, where the original author’s play, the director’s vision, and the actor’s approach to the role meet. The visibility of the commissioners, in the case of the theatre, is likely to have an effect on the relation between translator, commissioner and audience. We may therefore assume that in any conflict the theatre makers will play a visible part.

The visibility of commissioners complicates Chesterman’s notion of expectancy norms. Chesterman implies that the readers (or audience) of the translation have expressed expectancy norms that in turn shape the form of the translation. The changing market calls for a new translation and the translator caters for this new audience. If a retranslation clashes with a previous retranslation, this must be seen as the expression of conflicts between groups in the audience. In the case of the theatre, it is the question whether these expectancy norms still are dominant when the intermediate party positions itself as an active determining factor in the interpretation of the text. The creators of a performance are indeed the first audience of the translation, with expectancy norms of their own. Do not they, rather than the spectators in the theatre, establish the norms for the translation?

Both the theatre maker and the translator then are likely to be involved in the norm conflicts expressed by the retranslation. The relation between these two people and their relation with the audience will be the starting point of this thesis. This gives ample space to

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discover the personal motivations of both, before tying their fates to the destiny of a ‘target culture’. I venture the hypothesis that in retranslating for the theatre, the translator teams up with the theatre maker(s) to distinguish themselves from their mutual predecessor(s).

Assuming that a theatre translation is made on the basis of norms, I suppose that retranslation is an indication of a conflict of norms between those responsible for the earlier translation and those responsible for the consecutive translation. I will argue that a new trans-lation always strategically expresses a norm conflict, based on the hypothesis that a theatre retranslation always expresses a fundamental norm that represents a breach with at least one of the norms of the previous theatre translation.

On the basis of the context of the theatre translation, I further hypothesise that the director’s interpretation and the translator’s text share at least one norm which is an alterna-tive to a norm of the previous translation. The retranslation forms an intrinsic part of the director’s interpretation. If the director has commissioned the translation, the main charac-teristics of the translator’s strategy will concur with his interpretation of the play. In other words, the director supports the norm change that is fundamental to the retranslation.

The paradox of theatre translation is that the intended target audience of the theatre translation is, in the first place, the director (rather than the spectators). This is only the case if the director of a play (or more in general the theatre makers) is involved with the inter-pretation of the play (and it should be stressed that this is a fairly modern convention). Thus I question Chesterman’s assumption that professional norms are governed by expectancy norms in general, for I will argue that the retranslation does not aim to comply to all norms of an audience at a certain point of time, but rather appears to go against the grain of some of them. The director uses the retranslation as a means to position his interpretation of a play

vis-à-vis the interpretations of other directors. The more important the role of the director in

creating the concept of a new play, the greater the need to emphasise its novelty or unique-ness. Retranslation is one of the means to create this effect.

Moreover, a retranslation will have to deal with the fact that each text creates its own tradition. A view Eiselt (1995) shares with Haag (1984) is that each new translation adds new levels of (metaphoric) meaning to the text. Previous translations have already generated new meanings, and the new translation refers to both the source text and to earlier translations. Thus retranslation is not merely a conflict between people or groups, but a conflict within the context of the text’s tradition. The impact of retranslation as a statement is concomitant to the tradition of the theatre text.

The intimate connection between the poetics of the translator and the director’s vision of the play could be a major explanation for the tremendous number of Hamlet (re)translations. The use of retranslation as a means of differentiation for a director, especially after the canonisation of this particular play, could also explain the very visible role the trans-lator has in the production of the play. First, however, the question of how a retranslation might take up arms against the force of tradition should be addressed. This involves a study of the kind of poetics a translator can adopt, and of the part played by theatre makers and the audience with regard to these norms.

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Differing norms in theatre

translation

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2 2�1Deducingnormsfromatranslation

The aim of this chapter is to design a working model for assessing the hypothesised norm breach that a retranslation represents. This chapter will outline the choices the theatre transla-tor has to deal with, as well as the ways he can possibly rank them. If the resulting hierarchy is different from his predecessor’s, it will be assumed that the new translation represents a norm

breach. Further, this chapter is also concerned with the relationship of director and translator

and with the impact on the audience of the norms expressed in the translation.

In the field of Descriptive Translation Studies, translation is considered as norm-based behaviour. Norms are considered a form of socio-cultural constraint: they are intersub-jective factors that are anchored between the two poles of relatively absolute rules on the one hand, and pure idiosyncrasies on the other (Toury, 1995: 54). Toury (1995: 58-61) posits that norms are active when a particular text is chosen for translation (preliminary norm), when the translator decides on his translational strategy (initial norm) and also during the act of trans-lating itself (operational norms). The operational norms, those governing the active translation process, can be divided into matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms.15

In this chapter, I will propose a perspective on norms that are active in three differ-ent phases: prior to and during the process of translating a theatre text, as well as during the reception of the text. This approach reflects an attempt to combine Toury’s basic distinction of norms with the findings of previous scholarship. It should be stressed here that my views are also very much informed by the findings that will be presented in the third chapter. The practical application of the different possibilities inferred from the translations that were studied in that chapter has determined the attention that I have given to the various particu-larities of theatre translation.

Figure 1 gives a rough outline of the possible options for the theatre translator. All aspects that I consider to be crucial in theatre translation have been given a certain position between source text and target culture. Although by necessity a simplification, the graph serves to visualise how the translator may have breached the norms of his predecessor. It will be used to act as an indicative summary of the translators’ norms.

Before turning to the theatre translator’s practical options with regard to the pre-liminary, matricial and textual-linguistic norms, the findings of previous scholarship will be discussed in order to appraise the choices a theatre translator encounters in his work, as well as the underlying poetics they can be related to.

2�2��eatretranslationasaparticularareaoftranslationstudies

Drama translation is a separate field of study within translation studies that has developed from the idea that for a translation to be theatrical, the theatrical characteristics are to be transferred into the other language (George Mounin, 1967; Klaus Bednarz, 1969; Jiri Levy, 1969).

5 Hermans (996) inserts an additional option between the preliminary and the initial norm: the choice to trans-late the text or to use another form of transfer (summary, adaptation, and quote).

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Van den Broeck (1986) calls the theatrical text dual in the sense that it is both a poetic-literary text and a text pertaining to the theatre.16 According to him, the translator of a

play is faced with the choice to either translate the play as a literary text, thereby identifying it with a single medium, the printed word, or to perceive it as a theatrical text in the context of a theatrical production. In that case, the text is polymedial because it is identified with both text and with performance. He calls the first option ‘retrospective translation’ and the second ‘prospective translation.’ Hence it is possible to distinguish literary translations of a play from

theatre translations. If the translator makes the choice to create a theatre translation, and only then, he will also have to consider the features that are typical of a theatre text. The notions

of adequacy and acceptability (Toury, 1978) should therefore be understood in terms of the medium: a translation that is acceptable as a literary text can be different from a translation that is considered acceptable as a dramatic text; the impossibility of using footnotes on stage being the most obvious example.

As a result of the idea that a theatre text is essentially different from a literary text, theatre translation theorists have identified a number of properties that are characteristic of theatre texts. Several studies centre on the notion of theatrical pragmatics as the key

char-6 See also Williams (968: 0); Bassnett (985: 90) and Anderman (998: ).

Figure 1: Possible options of a theatre translator

This diagram presents the options a translator has to consider when making a translation for the stage. The transla-tor has to take a stance with regard to his attitude towards the original author (‘initial norm’, treated in section .), what part of the original text he means to translate (‘matricial norms’, treated in .4), the extent to which he domes-ticates the socio-cultural contents of the original (‘situation’, treated in .5.) and the extent to which he respects the literary construction of the original (‘intertext’, treated in .5.). The attitudes in each category presented above are positioned on a gliding scale between the intention to be faithful to the source text and the intention to make a text that will fit in the target culture. The diagram is not exhaustive, as it is based only on the case studies in this dissertation and the findings of previous theory.

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acteristic of a dramatic text. Hofmann (1980) proposes a trichotomous model for drama translation, distinguishing between an expressive, content and pragmatic level. For him, the variable of pragmatics, i.e. effectiveness on stage, is raised to an invariable. Assimakopou-los (2002), departing from the idea that translation is an act of communication, takes up Hofmann’s hypothesis and applies relevance theory (Gutt, 2000) to drama translation. He concludes that: “the choices to be made during the actual translation of a play are left to the translators themselves and their understanding of what is optimally relevant to their audi-ence.” (2002: 36-7) A problematical aspect of relevance theory is that the translator is sup-posed to communicate the translated ‘intention’ of the original author, which in the case of Shakespeare is very difficult to know.

One major characteristic of theatrical pragmatics is the immediacy of the text.17 As

Crystal has noted, “in drama, there is no narrative framework other than that provided by the language of the characters and by the visual setting in which they act. (…) The dialogue must do everything.” (1997:75) In this respect, Assimakopoulos argues that

An important aspect of […] a view of drama as a single-oriented act of communica-tion is the simultaneity of communicacommunica-tion between the performance on stage and the audience. The audience of a play cannot take its time to clarify or ponder upon what they have just listened to. Above all that, in a case where the members of the audience need to clarify something, they cannot intervene in the play and address the performers. It is therefore clear that the drama translator cannot resort to clari-fying techniques that are accessible to other common types of translation practice [like the aforementioned footnotes]. (2002:23)

The pragmatic dimension of the theatre translation affects the acceptability of the translation within the context of the target culture differently from that of a literary transla-tion. As a result of the immediacy of the text, the audience needs to recognise the culture-specific elements that are contained in a play; if not, they will suffer so-called “cultural gaps” (Assimakopoulos, 2002: 19).

The theatre translation is not only measured by socially and culturally determined expectations in general, but also by expectations of the theatrical text in particular (Bassnett, 2000: 101-3). The effect of the performance text depends greatly on how theatrical codes and conventions are dealt with. According to Wellwarth (1981), the translator’s job is to “recreate the original language’s meaning in the socially accepted style of the target language.”18 The

encoded message of the play is not picked up when other, stronger codes are at work. For instance, the translator may see himself forced to subvert a play’s meaning and style in order to adapt it to a desired paradigm of entertainment (Fotheringham, 1984). Aaltonen (2000), in fact, claims that:

Theatre texts, perhaps more than any other genre, are adjusted to their reception, and the adjustment is always socially and culturally conditioned. Theatre as an art

 See Mounin (969: 9) on drama as an act of single-oriented communication. 8 See also Schultze (990).

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form is social and based on communal experience; it addresses a group of people in a particular place at a particular time. (2000: 53)

As a result of the communal nature of the theatre, theatre translators will be espe-cially prudent in their treatment of taboos, like sexually charged or politically delicate words and phrases.

The expectancy norms can therefore have a strong impact on the translator’s choices. Thus, it has been argued that the parameters of translation are not fixed once and for all (Hey-len, 1993). Translation then is “a socio-historical activity of a profoundly transformational nature,” and the translator can choose to maintain most of the original or rather to try and find “the best ready-made poetic models through which to represent the foreign text in the receiving literature.” (Heylen, 1993: 9) Heylen follows Even-Zohar (1978) in that this choice is dependent on the position and function of the translated text. A primary translation in the definition of Even-Zohar introduces innovations to the target culture repertoire and breaks with (elements of) established conventions. For Heylen, ‘primary’ activity is presumed to be that activity which takes the initiative when it comes to the creation of new items and models in literature; it represents the principle of innovation. When a translation takes up a primary position, Heylen argues, the chances that a translation will be close to the original in terms of adequacy are greater than otherwise. In her study of French Hamlet translations, Heylen proposes that translation is a form of cultural negotiation; translation mediates in supplying the target culture with a new poetics.

Within the field of Shakespeare studies much research has been dedicated to the in-terplay of literary poetics, the reception of Shakespeare and the choices in translation (among others Delabastita and D’hulst, 1993; Heylen, 1993; Delabastita, 1998), and to the role of Shakespeare translation in the formation of new cultural identities (Brisset, 1990, 1996). Essays that cover the gamut of the problems facing Shakespeare translators as well as the in-terpretative implications of their choices can be found in Hoenselaars (2004b) and Carvalho Homem and Hoenselaars (2004).

On a more practical level, the translator has to deal with the codes of the theatrical text. In the light of the fluctuating nature of the accepted theatre text, this ‘nature of the thea-tre text’ can only be posited very tentatively. Nevertheless, it can safely be maintained that the performative aspect constitutes a major characteristic of the dramatic text. As stated above, drama extends the single medium of the written text, which is merely one code amongst a set of other codes (Ubersfeld and Veltrusky, 1978).19 As Bassnett notes, “far from being complete

in itself, like a novel or a poem, [the text of a play] is arguably only part of the total equation that is the play in performance.” (2000:96)

As a complication of this variety in codes, there is the interesting fact that the per-formance of a play is often metaphorically likened to the act of translation. In this respect, it is helpful to call Jakobson’s distinction between different acts of translation to mind (1959: 113-118). Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. Interlingual translation or translation proper is an

Figure

Figure 1: Possible options of a theatre translator
Figure 2: Series of concretisations
Figure 3: Hamlet in Dutch translation 1777-1882
Figure 5: Hamlet in Dutch translation 1982-2001
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